Good Morning.

Today is our 2,722nd day in Iraq and our 3,238th day in Afghanistan.

We'll start as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing wars, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4416
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4277
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3955
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3557
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 188

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,249
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 784
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,457
Journalists - Iraq : 338
Academics Killed - Iraq: 437

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$ 1, 073, 224, 275, 000 .00

Even as more of our troops come home from Iraq, they face an uncertain future. While many of them will finally end up at home, many more of them will eventually re-deploy to Afghanistan. With our limited core of volunteer soldiers, there will be many that will be heading overseas for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time...or more.

In WWII, soldiers often spent years away from their families. My own great-uncle had but one weekend at home from when he enlisted in early 1942 up until Japan surrendered 3 years later. But their war was different....there was a clear goal, as articulated by FDR...the "unconditional surrender" of Germany and Japan.

Our wars have been going on for the better part of a decade...with no clear goal given by anyone, and a seemingly endless engagement ahead.

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63 comments (Latest Comment: 09/01/2010 02:00:11 by wickedpam)

The Tea Party wants to overthrow our government and install one that is run by them under their strict laws. A small government, so small in fact that no “social” programs would exist, including anything that they see as an entitlement program. They consider public education, healthcare and social security to be included under that umbrella. I have yet to hear from them if they consider returning vets as entitled to receive disability of any kind.

I’m describing here the Tea Party extremist, not the blind followers who claim to be moderate. Not the ones that really just want a peaceful life with their family and abhor violence. These people are just pawns for the Taliban extremists. Their lives are based in fear and so their reactions are based on fear even though they believe that they are doing God’s work.
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3 comments (Latest Comment: 08/29/2010 17:35:44 by livingonli)

As part of an occasional ongoing series, we like to showcase interesting science news. To help us today, we have Bill Nye the Science G--- what? We don't? He had a previous engagement? No problem - I can do this. Just let put on this white lab coat and **oof** aw crap it's backwards... whatever... So let's fire up those bunsen burners and see what's cooking in the land of science!
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41 comments (Latest Comment: 08/27/2010 22:22:10 by livingonli)

FourFreedoms blog has been up and running for nearly 3 yrs now, and it's been starting to show. The overall look and feel has hardly changed since we started and we felt like it was time for a facelift. It was also time to make some useability adjustments, both for our members and casual visitors.

So - here is a list of the major changes:

Stylistic:
- Removed the various colored rounded-corner panels
- Cleaned up the graphics and menus
- Simplified the menu bar
- Lightened the overall shades of color blog-wide
- Changed the comment/blog edit box from white on dark blue to black on white
- Changed the quote boxes to blend better with the new look & feel

Functional:
- Got rid of unused and little used blog features, such as:
    - Polls
    - Advertisement panel
    - TrackBack panel
    - Forum link
- No more right-side panel, so blog makes better use of screen space
- Hiding/Showing blog and menus no longer refreshes entire screen (settings are saved in the background)
- Moved emoticons and audicons to be directly below edit box, so they are always there if you need them (in both cases, they are still the abreviated list, with the complete list still available via popup).
- Emoticons, Audicons, and edit buttons can all be easily and quickly hidden/shown
- When quoting a comment, it simply pops the quote into the edit box without refreshing the entire screen.
- Login and Search are now simple drop downs.
- Change password is now a popup screen
- Search now incorporates a weighted keyword table derived from the blog and comments, speeding the search process.
- Search results are now displayed in a "google"-type list
- When displaying a search result blog, the "search for" word is highlighted.
- Added user options for hiding YouTubes and Flash videos (for faster page loading), just like the "Hide Pictures" option did (displays them as links). And - it works correctly now.
- Added a security-level setting for blog posts, so they can be set to "members only" when necessary (such as for discussing member meetups, or personal details between members).
- The blog description and Fold are now required fields when creating/saving a new blog post.

We also added the Mission Statement and Rules of Conduct from the old Forum.
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75 comments (Latest Comment: 08/26/2010 03:50:14 by BobR)

Good Monday. The community center debate is still raging during the second summer of discontent. Do you remember last summer? Town halls mayhem, tea party protests and the general fanning the flames of anger from the right. This summer it's more of the same, only it's couched in the form of anti-muslim resentment.

America we have a problem. A serious problem. We have an economy that is still trying to recover, unemployment is still staggeringly high. Corporations are still not hiring. Parents are struggling to buy back to school supplies. We still are fighting in Afghanistan and instead the media focuses on a Muslim community center and the faith of the President.
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45 comments (Latest Comment: 08/23/2010 20:32:59 by BobR)